Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light review for Switch: 30 Years Later

With Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light on the Nintendo Switch, fans finally get a chance to finally see Marth and Roy’s origins. Is it worth it?

Title: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light
Developer: Intelligent Systems, Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: December 4, 2020

Recently Nintendo dropped a new Fire Emblem game on the Nintendo Switch. Well, not technically new. It’s to the U.S. audience because while Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light was the first Fire Emblem game, originally for the NES, it never had a U.S. release. The only way to play it was either via an emulation program with a poor fan translation or to play the original and not entirely know what was going on if you can’t read Japanese.

But now, Fire Emblem fans can finally play the first entry at just about six bucks. The issue is this, how do I review a 30-year-old game? To do this, I need to get myself into the headspace so give me a minute while I play games that younger me would have played on the NES to get myself into the headspace.

Cue screen wipe to hint that time has progressed.

 Alright, so I played a bit of three games I was obsessed with on the NES when I was young. Willow, Goonies 2, and yes, Yo! Noid. I played about 10 minutes of each just to get in the NES headspace because admittedly it’s really easy to get spoiled.

If I reviewed it from a modern perspective I’d talk about how the game was really confusing at first because the game literally just drops you into a battle with no tutorial and the control scheme is really confusing because it fits everything you can do in two buttons. The limited color pallet would be mentioned. And the overall shock when in your very first battle you discover that enemy pirates can walk on water (I know, they’re probably swimming but listen).

But from an NES perspective young me would have really dug this. I was OBSESSED with Shining Force for the Sega Genesis. When Shining Force came out I’d be in my mom’s room playing it until she’d beg me to turn the volume down as it was the same music over and over and over all day. When Shining Force CD came out, angstier me would be in the darkness of the basement playing through the massive title while letting a Stabbing Westward or Garbage CD loop.

So young me will be reviewing this.

Compared to other NES games, Fire Emblem: SDatSOL (which is even big as an acronym) gets a LOT done. There was a little bit of dialogue in the beginning but all I got was that the princess had descended from her castle. Then I kept thinking about how alighted means to either leave a form of transport or for a bird to descend and I got distracted picturing the princess leaving a subway with feathery wings and, listen, ADHD is real.

It also took me a moment to figure out how to move my characters to the point where I literally thought my game had frozen but when I started moving I got really into it. I quickly realized blue/good and red/bad.

I had my troops visit the little towns and the town folk gave me little chunks of dialogue that helped flesh the world out a bit. Some guy reminded my knight that people on pegasus should watch for archers. A bizarre thing to just randomly start a conversation with (I like “Hello”) but a reminder I appreciated as there was zero tutorial. The map was also fairly easy to read. Even without knowledge of Fire Emblem, I could realize that forests and mountains would slow me down a bit.

As I battled I was really happy to see that one of my favorite things from Fire Emblem (and for that matter, Shining Force) was also in the NES version in some capacity. When you pick a character and have them fight the enemy it goes into a small cut scene of sorts where you see a close up of that particular character hitting their opponent. It really helped give me more of an idea of how my characters looked which was nice because I absolutely do not understand what the paladin’s sprite is supposed to be without that closeup.

I’m not too far in yet but I’m sure nothing bad happens between Cain here and his fellow knight Abel.”

Now, all that being said, is the game fun? Well…kinda? The game moves very slow and nothing in the game necessarily feels strong so it’s not uncommon for each enemy to be taken out by four hits. In the time I could have beaten levels 1-1 through 1-4 in Super Mario Bros I maybe made it halfway across the first battle and that’s with the battle speed turned quickest. With most NES games being faster-paced, including my favorite RPGs of the NES era like Willow and Crystalis.

It was fun but it was also definitely a slog. Especially on something like the Nintendo Switch which is awesome at providing pick-up-and-play fun, Fire Emblem: Giant Title felt like I had to make a commitment if I wanted to get through a single battle. Historically, however, it is really cool to finally see where Marth and Roy from Smash Brothers came from as those two were incredibly mysterious to the US audience. Hopefully, this means we’ll finally get Mother 3 stateside as oh my god you guys have no idea what you’re missing. The GBA version is art. Oops, sidetracked.

All in all, if you’re a Fire Emblem fan you can’t really go wrong with getting more of what you like for six bucks but I just wish there was a bit more to it…and maybe a manual.

A copy of this game was provided to App Trigger for the purpose of this review. All scores are ranked out of 10, with .5 increments. Click here to learn more about our Review Policy.